DAUNTING TASK FOR GARLAND JURORS
He was a happy child who loved to kick around a soccer ball, suit up for a hockey game and make grown-ups laugh whenever he doled out one of his famously heartfelt compliments.
Just a few minutes into Justice David Gates’ instructions to the jury Wednesday morning, I recall the above anecdote about Nathan O’Brien, related to me a couple of years ago by a family member.
This memory is triggered by one of the first comments by Gates, in a daylong instruction to the jury before its members are sequestered to decide the fate of Douglas Garland. On June 30, 2014, Nathan and his grandparents, Kathy and Alvin Liknes, disappeared from their Calgary home; their DNA, teeth and burned flesh was later found at the Airdrie-area farm where Garland lived with his elderly parents.
“Sympathy can have no place in your deliberations,” the kindly judge cautioned, before, over the course of an entire day, he listed a dizzying array of rules, facts and details that they need to take into consideration as they face their daunting task of reviewing 89 exhibits and the testimony of 48 witnesses — to decide whether Garland is guilty of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, or a not-guilty verdict on all three counts.
After five weeks of some of the most horrifying evidence ever heard within the walls of the Calgary Courts Centre, Gates spends much of the day dealing with the dry, hard facts, complete with such jargon as “decision trees” and “footprints of life” evidence.
Still, there are frequent and necessary returns to some of its darkest moments, such as the “swipe” patterns that told a tale of a brutal blood-letting in the Liknes home, the Internet searches for torture and gore, the purchasing of bone grinders and a dissection kit, along with those heartbreaking but vital aerial photographs of bodies lying not far from a burn barrel where Garland is accused of burning the victims.
Once the 12 jurors are sequestered to make their decision — at the end of Wednesday’s instructions, a male juror, randomly selected is sent home, as only 12 can go to the deliberation phase — the many journalists attending the trial are free to inform the public about what those jurors didn’t see and hear, from machinations in court without their presence, to Garland’s long-standing run-ins with law enforcement.
While defence lawyer Kim Ross focused on the testimony of Garland’s parents, along with Allen Liknes, that he was a “nonconfrontational” person, much can be said now about the several charges he has faced over the years involving violence; his two-decades-long record for property offences; and his prison stint for drug trafficking after police busted a meth lab on the family farm.
Soon, that jury will also have a better understanding about the numerous references to documents in Garland’s possession with the name of Matthew Hartley, the dead teenager whose identity he assumed while on the lam for several years on the drug charges — information that makes more chilling Crown prosecutor Shane Parker’s “still waters run deep” reference to the accused earlier in the week.
Despite all the ugliness, there have been many poignant moments the jurors also didn’t witness. After sitting each day in court remaining stoic and silent, those friends and family of the victims shored each other up outside the courtroom doors, holding on to one another when the days were unbearable, wiping the tears of those overwhelmed by sitting day in and out near a man that the Crown contends caused the death of three of their loved ones.
No one with a heart can help but sympathize with their plight, nor has been left unscathed by the toll of the past five weeks. Not even Justice Gates, who chokes up when discussing little Nathan and his death and at the day’s conclusion, when he dismisses the disappointed juror just after 5 p.m.
For those jurors, though, it’s a luxury they can’t afford as they head off to make their decision, cut off from the outside world, to do, as Justice Gates reminds them throughout the day, the best job they can and use their “common sense.”